The Richard and Judy Bottleneck

In his review of the 100 top bestsellers for 2008, John Dugdale forecasts bad times ahead for literary fiction as a result of Richard and Judy's move from prominence:

It's not just authors of commercial fiction who will miss the teatime taste dictators, as they regularly backed more ambitious writing.

Others expressed similar thoughts in the wake of the loss of the Jonathan Ross show, the view being that commercial fiction once promenaded there will now be forced into the 'lower-level' publicity slots, ousting more literary fiction.

Well, I don't know about you, but I have this weird hunch that it might not be such a bad world in which publishers can no longer bring home the (literary) bacon via a tiny selection of the literary titles published each year by relying on celebrity-based TV and a couple of dictators, as Dugdale calls them, and will maybe have to find some other way of upping their marketing game for literary fiction in general.